Lack of unity in North Carolina's Democratic Party

The North Carolina Democratic Party lacks internal discipline, Scott believes, in part because of the personal nature of politics in the state. Although Scott attributes this lack of unity to the decline of the party in the state, he still "didn't care too much about what the party did."

About this Excerpt

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Robert W. (Bob) Scott, September 18, 1986. Interview C-0036. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

KARL CAMPELL:

Does it seem to you that the Democractic leadership changed or are things
still being done the way they were back when you first entered politics
in the '60's?

BOB SCOTT:

Oh, no, things are being done differently. Let me first say that I
don't follow the interworkings of the party all that closely.
I never have been a strong——well, I've
been a strong Democrat, I'll always be a
Democrat——a loyal Democrat but
I've never been a strong party person. I've
always said there's two types of politics. One is your party
politics, be it Democrat or Republican, in which you get in and
you're really concerned about who's going to be
precinct chairman or who's going to be your county chairman,
your district representative, all like that. You fight that internal
party politics. And then we've got your other political game
that's played outside of the party structure somewhat, as a
candidate. In other words, when I ran for governor I don't
guess I'd ever read a Democratic party platform in my life,
you know. You don't really care. Under our two party system
you've got the mechanism to run on so you identify yourself
with one party, and I'm not saying that it is not important.
It is important because that it the mechanism by which you get elected.
But there's the internal politics and then the external
politics. I was always playing the external politics. That is to say I
was as a candidate for public office as opposed to being a candidate for
a party post. I didn't really care who was, you know
… 2
2 Here I meant that it didn't
really matter to me who was precinct chairman or county
chairman. My agenda was going to be my agenda, and I was running
on that and philosophically it happened to be fairly close to the party
platform. I didn't agree with everything they had but I
didn't talk about the party platform when I would run. I
don't think they do today. That's why the party
itself has never been——there's no
discipline in the party. In other words, if you were a strong party
official in your county, you had a responsibility for all the nominees
for the party and helping them to get elected. I
would be running for governor. Okay, if I got elected and you wanted
something from, a favor from the governor's office, I would
listen to you but I would check with whoever my campaign chairman was in
the county, and that individual would have more say so about whether I
granted that. In other words, it's not like they were in New
York state and some other states, where the party discipline was
strong.

KARL CAMPELL:

It's always been that way in North Carolina?

BOB SCOTT:

It's always been that way in this state, yeah.

KARL CAMPELL:

More personal kind of politics?

BOB SCOTT:

Exactly. That's a good way to put it. So I didn't
really, within reason, didn't care too much about what the
party did.